The association’s 428 member savings banks have 45 million SparkassenCard debit cards in circulation, around half of all the debit cards issued in Germany. DSGV will begin with a pilot project involving 900,000 cards in early 2012 in Braunschweig, Wolfsburg and Hanover and plans to convert all its cards to contactless by the end of 2015.

NFC-based payments will be introduced “no later than 2014″, Wolfgang Adamiok, head of payments at DSGV, told Die Welt.